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ITCM 18 - Sleipnir
Inside the Competitor's Mind 18 - Sleipnir I’d had difficulty scheduling time to meet with Sleipnir for his interview. A final year medical student, he wasn’t far off from becoming a full fledged doctor, and his free time was limited. As he was in Australia, I had eagerly asked about meeting at a place with kangaroos and koalas. His reply to that had me laughing helplessly. “How about at the Hospital? We have kangaroos and koalas as nurses and allied health here, after all.” Well, I guess we were going to get along just fine. His other alternative was someplace we could play board games. Now I play a mean game of Scrabble, but I wanted to be able to concentrate on the interview, not triple word score on a bingo. So I arrived at the hospital and texted him so he could meet me at the front desk. I didn’t think the receptionist would understand if I asked for Dr. Sleipnir! He’d told me he was half-asian and half-caucasian, so I had an idea of who I was looking for. I turned when I heard someone calling my name. “Darynn?” There was a warm smile on his lips and his hand was already outstretched for mine. “You know me as Sleipnir,” his eyes twinkled in amusement when the receptionist’s eyes rounded in surprise. “Come on, we’ll talk in the break room. It’s fairly quiet at the moment.” We settled down at a table and he began to talk. “Well, as you know, my forum name is Sleipnir, Odin's 8 legged horse in commemoration of my first 4*/5 pull, Odin. My In-game name is similar in theme (Norse Mythology), but that's a secret,” he grinned at me before continuing. “I started gaming back in the days where DOS gaming was the big thing. Liero was a big deal way back when,” he stopped for a moment, laughing a little at the memory. “I'm a huge fan of RPGs, specifically JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Game), but I'll play any kind of RPG really. Xenoblade Chronicles and Bravely Default are my current all time favourite games, but I've got huge nostalgia for the older Final Fantasies, although I enjoy the new ones too. I also enjoy the more obscure SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) JRPG titles like Chrono Trigger, Tales of Phantasia and the rest of that franchise, Bahamut Lagoon, Breath of Fire, Dragon Warrior Monsters etc.” He had to pause to take a deep breath after that long list of games, and I laughed at him for it. He chuckled before going on, “I'm also on and off a competitive Pokemon fanatic. There are, like, months where I binge on and obsess over competitive Pokemon battling. Then I’ll suddenly get tired of ranking on pokemon showdown and retire for months,” he pursed his lips to contemplate it, “Frankly, It's embarrassing.” I went into peals of laughter over the sheepish look he gave me. “BB2's artwork pulled me in. It's beautiful and the gameplay is, while not exactly the most riveting thing I've ever encountered, engaging enough to keep my playing. The art is something else though. Did you know that Chikagoro's eyes BLINK?” Excited about the intricacy of the art, he pulled out his phone to show me the commander he was referring to. “ I love the art, I like how the development team is genuinely trying their best to listen to feedback and improve their game.” He sat back, a slight frown on his brow, “But I don't like the PvP system at all and I don't like the structure of leaderboard events in general since it feels exclusive rather than inclusive.” He got up to grab us a couple of sodas from the vending machine. “I'm guildless. I don't particularly feel the need to join a guild with no real inkling over when this feature will actually be implemented.” He shrugged, “I’m a forum mod, so I'm automatically going to be supportive of the other forum mods. I can only say that we're a new team, there are quite a few of us and that we all genuinely have the community's best interests at heart. We're going to make mistakes occasionally. Sometimes these mistakes will upset you, and we're sorry for that, however you're just going to have to trust us that we're doing our best to learn from those mistakes and conduct ourselves as professionally as possible.” “I'm a P2P player myself, for the record. I think the notion that F2P players need to be ground under the heel of P2P players who 'support' the game is ridiculous and riddled with a sense of over-entitlement. Both types of players are important. As a P2P player, you get rewarded with advantages that your money buys you. You don't get more of a say than any other person. My stance is that the content of the game needs to be accessible to F2P players. It's understandable that people with strong teams would be looking for a challenge, so higher difficulty levels with minor incentives for trying them are definitely welcome, but F2P players who work hard and save their sigils should have a shot at higher tier rewards too.” “As for leaderboards? Please, I don't have time for that. I'm generally okay with shooting for completing the grindable commander or reaching an EP reward that I've got my eye on. Maybe one day, but not today. I have no time for that. Gauntlet events are my favourite thus far because there's a set, finite goal that I can reach within a predetermined time frame to work towards and the reward is brilliant.” His eyes shone with excitement at the thought of the rewards in the gauntlet events. Then the look in his eyes changed to mischief and I braced myself. I couldn’t imagine what he might be up to. “Ready to meet the kangaroos and the koalas out on the hospital floor?” I burst into laughter and let him show me around and introduce the people he worked with. Category:Mizy Category:ITCM